The User Journey Board

To get started, let’s have a look at the User Journey. As part of your planning, you are going to want to work out the various stages of the user journey. You may recognise this from some of my work based of course on Amy Jo Kim’s Player Journey!

Take a few PostIt notes and write down three things.

Start by writing down what the actual goal of your design is and putting them on the “Goal and Beyond” box.

For example, are you looking for people to write reviews of products on your site? Are you designing to help new employees settle in to the work place?

Now, write down what you feel the first steps of the journey will be and put it on the first box “Getting Started”.

This could be a tutorial, simple actions you want people to start with, the employee induction etc.

Finally, think about what the user will be doing between these two phases of the journey and put them in the middle box “Doing More”

In the example below, the middle stage between rating reviews and writing reviews is commenting on them.

You should end up with a board that looks a bit like this!

User Journey Example

Activity Loops

Activity Loops

Once you have the journey mapped out, you can start to work on how you are going to help people along. You will need two or three of the Activity Loops boards for this.

Start by writing down the action or activity you are wanting people to do , on a PostIt Note and stick it to “Action / Activity”.

Here we will look at a user rating reviews.

Now, have a look through the deck and think about what how you feel the system should respond.

In our example, as people begin by rating reviews, they are shown some form of progress.

Once the system has responded and the user has had feedback or some sort of reward, how will their experience be modified to encourage them to continue. Pick a card that you feel fits this and put it on the “Modifier” box.

Here, as the user adds reviews they are given progress feedback. At certain stages, they will go up a level on the system ranking.

Finally, add a PostIt note to the “Next Activity” box that explains how the user will move towards the next phase of their journey.

In this case, when they reach a certain level, commenting will be unlocked for them.

Activity Loops Example

Do this for each phase of the journey. You can include multiple Activity Loops for each phase, but start of simple!